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Old 02-12-2020, 12:38 PM   #1
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Best (reasonable) RV Roadside Assistance

I KNOW there has to be a topic for this, but my search for “roadside assistance” finds a LOT of topics, none of which appear to talk about roadside assistance…


After our two disastrous experiences with Good Same Roadside Assistance we cancelled it. I’m going to be traveling for 6 – 8 weeks with the 30-foot 5th wheel (its short but somewhat tall) and F-350. and having a plan to get towed to a campground seems like a good idea – I don’t know if this is actually TRUE since the time I NEEDED to have the broken trailer moved I still had Good Sam (long, very ugly story).


Presuming it IS a good idea to be able to get a broken truck towed to a shop AND the trailer (and me) towed to a campground somewhere in proximity to where the truck is being repaired, OR to get a broken trailer towed to a repair shop, what are the GOOD options? What are the reasonably priced options that are hopefully not worthless?


Experiences?
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Old 02-12-2020, 12:50 PM   #2
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I don't know that there is a 'best', but the ones that seem to get a lot of recommendations recently are: CoachNet, Escapees, and FMCA. The last two require you to join that club to be able to buy them. Escapees (https://www.escapees.com/) is absolutely worth joining for their many other benefits. I don't know much about FMCA. These are not the cheapest.
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Old 02-12-2020, 05:20 PM   #3
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I've used Good Sam Roadside service a few times and got real good service
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Old 02-12-2020, 09:26 PM   #4
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Strange story..... we just had a rider on our vehicle insurance for something like $20-$40.

We planned to spend the summer in Alaska and didn't want to take our diesel motorhome. We bought a used truck and small 5th wheel just for this trip - planning to sell afterward. We left Arizona and stopped in Death Valley. The engine blew on the truck. We called our insurance company and they sent two tow trucks from 50 mi. away - the nearest. The truck was put on one & the 5th wheel on the other. They placed the 5th wheel in a RV park while an engine was located out of a junk yard for the truck and installed. The repair/tow facility gave us a loaner car.

There were no charges for the tows with our insurance rider. We had Progressive at the time.

When repaired we drove back to Arizona, unpacked, put the truck & 5th wheel on a consignment lot and took off for a trouble-free summer in Alaska. We should have taken our motorhome in the first place.

The truck & 5th wheel were sold while we were gone.
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Old 02-13-2020, 10:18 AM   #5
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Wizard, I’m glad you’ve had good luck with Good Sam. I suspect a lot of people have. And some haven’t. I’m in the “haven’t” group… The two times I’ve NEEDED them, most recently when the 5th wheel destroyed an axle in the middle of the desert between Las Vegas and Kingman, Arizona, after 2 hours of messing with their dispatching people, they declared “there was no one available anywhere” to transport the crippled trailer the 30 miles to Kingman for repairs.
I ended up pulling the trailer the 30 miles on 3 wheels, going 25 mph on a highway with everyone else going 75, to a campground in Kingman. I did not enjoy the experience.
The following morning I again contacted Good Sam to have them transport the trailer the 3 miles to the trailer repair facility. Once again, they were “unable to find anyone”.
There were several conversations with Good Sam during the 24 hours from when the trailer failed to when I transported it to the repair shop, but none of them were productive. After the two wretched experiences we cancelled the Good Sam Roadside Assistance.
Unfortunately, we don’t have Progressive, and according to our present insurance, Metropolitan, they have NOTHING available for transporting the trailer in the event of a problem. AND they max out the towing support for the tow vehicle at $100. I’ve been told it is routine to have a tow from somewhere in Death Valley to the nearest repair facility cost in excess of $1000, so Metropolitan hasn’t got anything to help in the event of a problem.

I’ll check out the others, but at the moment, PRESUMING AAA actually WILL DO what they say (of course Good Sam ALSO guaranteed fantastic support and service), I’ll probably go with that and look at moving all the automotive coverage from Metropolitan to Progressive if they actually DO have the necessary coverage.
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Old 02-13-2020, 09:42 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dkperez View Post
Wizard, I’m glad you’ve had good luck with Good Sam. I suspect a lot of people have. And some haven’t. I’m in the “haven’t” group… The two times I’ve NEEDED them, most recently when the 5th wheel destroyed an axle in the middle of the desert between Las Vegas and Kingman, Arizona, after 2 hours of messing with their dispatching people, they declared “there was no one available anywhere” to transport the crippled trailer the 30 miles to Kingman for repairs.
I ended up pulling the trailer the 30 miles on 3 wheels, going 25 mph on a highway with everyone else going 75, to a campground in Kingman. I did not enjoy the experience.
The following morning I again contacted Good Sam to have them transport the trailer the 3 miles to the trailer repair facility. Once again, they were “unable to find anyone”.
There were several conversations with Good Sam during the 24 hours from when the trailer failed to when I transported it to the repair shop, but none of them were productive. After the two wretched experiences we cancelled the Good Sam Roadside Assistance.
Unfortunately, we don’t have Progressive, and according to our present insurance, Metropolitan, they have NOTHING available for transporting the trailer in the event of a problem. AND they max out the towing support for the tow vehicle at $100. I’ve been told it is routine to have a tow from somewhere in Death Valley to the nearest repair facility cost in excess of $1000, so Metropolitan hasn’t got anything to help in the event of a problem.

I’ll check out the others, but at the moment, PRESUMING AAA actually WILL DO what they say (of course Good Sam ALSO guaranteed fantastic support and service), I’ll probably go with that and look at moving all the automotive coverage from Metropolitan to Progressive if they actually DO have the necessary coverage.
Thanks for giving a thumbs down on Good Sam.We've had GS for several years only using them once until recently.Serpentine Belt broke & we had new Belt with us.Hubby not able to do it himself so we called GS.After waiting almost 3hrs.the guy finally showed up.GS had given him incorrect info as to our location.Took him all of 20min. to put new belt on & our bill was $388.00..!!! Our policy expires in Dec.this yr but few days later we get email our subscription had expired but we could save a bunch by renewing now!!! I'll be looking for a different one. I will say the service man did follow us for about 20 miles to make sure things were going as it should.Sorry excuse for a company going by name Good.

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Old 02-14-2020, 06:49 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Wizard View Post
I've used Good Sam Roadside service a few times and got real good service

Using these ERS is a roll of the dice, none of them have a dedicated tow truck network. They all use the low bid local tow services. I've come to believe that the difference between the not so good networks: GS ERS and the better ones is how dense that network is away from urban areas. That is they contracted with more local tow services outside of cities. Good Sams and AAA work fine in an urban area. But when you are out in Two Dogs Montana they often cannot find a tow service near where you are. And I find that they are horrible in figuring out just where you are. They can't use gps coordinates and go by Interstate exits in my experience. Not so great when you are way in between exits on a rural stretch of interstate and worse when you are on so rural local road.


Coachnet on the other hand has always come thru for me. Once when I ended up with GS and Coachnet (dealer gave us a free year of GS when we already had CN) We had a problem on a rural section of an interstate, I think it may have been in Arkansas or maybe Alabama. I spent literally 30 minutes trying to get the GS operator to understand just where we were. Mile markers did not compute in her head. And when she finally tried to find a tow service we waited 90 minutes only to be told that they don't have one nearby. Called CN, on the phone 3 minutes, service truck there within 20 minutes. It was some guy with a flatbed truck with a generator and air compressor on back but he got us up and going in 10 minutes.


When I told this story over on RV.NET the GS people gave us another free year of GS...whoopy!
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Old 02-14-2020, 12:12 PM   #8
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Our insurance co has a refund policy we took out. I have to pay for the service to the garage but I am reimbursed by my Ins. co after I submit the claim. We also have Good Sam to cover more details.



This gives us duel coverage. Haven't needed it yet but the ins. co has been good to us so far.
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Old 02-14-2020, 02:34 PM   #9
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Thanks for the replies…

That was similar to my FIRST experience with Good Sam Roadside Assistance… I was in Louisiana and broke the serpentine belt on my tow vehicle. I HAD a spare belt (I always have a spare belt and the tool(s) to change it) but as I checked I realized the idler pulley had frozen, so changing the belt wasn’t going to work. I was a few miles outside a smaller town/city so I called Good Same Roadside Assistance. I figured they’d quickly get me a tow to town where the idler could be replaced, slap the belt on, and get down the road……..

The closest tow they had on contract was NOT anyone from whatever town was nearby, telling me they’d have to send someone from <I don’t remember where> and it would be 2 – 3 hours…….

I found an auto parts store in the nearby town, they had an idler pulley, I bought it over the phone and had them deliver it. Less than 15 minutes later a little car pulled to the side of the road where I was sitting, and the guy handed me the new pulley. I bolted it on, changed the belt and off I went.
That was “incredibly piss-poor service“ time 1. The ones after that were worse. FAR worse, culminating in the one in Arizona.

Yesterday I called AAA. They seemed nice, and assured me they would work hard to get me help if needed. I also called Metropolitan, our insurance carrier, to see if they had anything. They did NOT. Towing the truck was covered for a whopping $50, and there was NOTHING available for any support whatsoever on the trailer. I got bounced 4 times, to different groups from claim to roadside assistance, back to policy and whatever, and every one of them either told me “Nope, nothing, nohow, period” or had NO clue and transferred me somewhere else. Eventually I decided to believe them and hung up.

Called Coach-Net. TOTALLY DIFFERENT… They were amused by my questions, and when I gave them the short version of my experience with Good Sam, the person I was talking to was horrified. Absolutely assured me this WOULD NOT happen with them – particularly the situation in which our not-long-out-of-warranty car ate a transmission in an intersection in town at rush hour – and Good Sam wasn’t much help. Ended up finding our own tow to the repair shop a half mile away.

Long story short, it’s not as cheap as Good Sam likely is, but for $180/year, less than the $195/year that AAA Minneapolis wanted, I have a reasonable amount of confidence that next time I’m in trouble Coach-Net will help.

I even hit them with the situation I heard about when I was in Death Valley – couple traveled a hundred miles or so up one of the off-the-beaten-path roads (not off-road, on an actual road) and broke down in the northern part of Death Valley. Towing their disabled car out cost them over a $1000… Coach-Net assured me that were the same thing to happen, which I FERVENTLY hope never will, they’d come and get me and the broken vehicle to the nearest shop that could properly fix it…

I HOPE I never have to find out, but for less than $200 it’s worth believing help is out there if I need it.
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Old 02-15-2020, 07:59 AM   #10
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I've been checking lately and AAA has a $69 first time deal running now.
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Old 02-15-2020, 08:58 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dkperez View Post
I KNOW there has to be a topic for this, but my search for “roadside assistance” finds a LOT of topics, none of which appear to talk about roadside assistance…


After our two disastrous experiences with Good Same Roadside Assistance we cancelled it. I’m going to be traveling for 6 – 8 weeks with the 30-foot 5th wheel (its short but somewhat tall) and F-350. and having a plan to get towed to a campground seems like a good idea – I don’t know if this is actually TRUE since the time I NEEDED to have the broken trailer moved I still had Good Sam (long, very ugly story).


Presuming it IS a good idea to be able to get a broken truck towed to a shop AND the trailer (and me) towed to a campground somewhere in proximity to where the truck is being repaired, OR to get a broken trailer towed to a repair shop, what are the GOOD options? What are the reasonably priced options that are hopefully not worthless?


Experiences?
When we owned a 3/4T truck and 5er we experienced the truck lost a fuel line plug. Good Sam ERS towed the truck to a diesel repair shop, towed the 5er to the nearest RV park. Overall it was a comforting experience to us.


Since the vast majority of emergency roadside services use the same contracted providers, I doubt you would have had better luck with any other ERS program.
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Old 02-15-2020, 09:50 PM   #12
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Coach Net has a coach only deal they do not advertise, coach only, and you have to call them to get it. $99 a year.
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Old 02-16-2020, 04:11 PM   #13
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I"m not sure where, or why, AAA would have such a drastic variance in price, but I talked to THREE offices in Minnesota, including Minneapolis. The lowest number I got for roadside assistance for the truck and 5th wheel was $160 for the Plus and $195 for the Premier (or whatever the most expensive one was) for a year.

As for everyone contracting with the same service companies, I have no idea. All I can say is more than once, when in a bad situation, Good Sam disappointed. Maybe, as has been pointed out earlier, it depends on WHERE you have the problem.

I'm sure there are a LOT of people that had successful experiences with Good Sam Roadside Assistance. We didn't.
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Old 02-16-2020, 07:58 PM   #14
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Here's a recommendation for FMCA . I'm going to have to tell on us and I hope you get a chuckle. I pulled our DP out of the driveway and on the street while I pulled the cars back into the driveway and got the dogs. I put leashes on 2 German Shepherds. Once outside my wife took one, put him in the MH and closed the door. Did I say the engine was running? I went to open the door and put second dog in and it was locked. So far on our maiden voyage I had made it out of the driveway before needing roadside service. My one dog just sat there looking at us wondering why we weren't getting in. Called FMCA and in less than an hour a locksmith was there opening the door. We provided a lot of humor to the neighbors.

Hope I never need them again, but got great service at a reasonable price.
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